I speak into the wrist communicator. “I have him, Balmora. I need a superfast airship.”
“You’re getting a delivery hover.” Balmora’s voice rings through the wrist communicator. “Creamy Crellas. Side alley—below your position. Can you get there now?”
“We’ll get there.”
The extra glove and leaded swatch I brought with me slide easily over Gabriel’s left hand, blotting out his moniker. I roll my brother onto his side, and then reach for his belt, sliding it from the loops of his trousers. Undoing my own belt, I hook them together. I thread the long belt behind Gabriel’s waist. Lying next to him like a spoon, so that my back is pressed against his chest, I secure the belt around my waist so he’s strapped to my back. Reaching behind me, I lift his arms and hoist them over my shoulders. The bruises on my back and chest ache. So does my arm, but I ignore the pain.
When I stand, Gabriel comes with me, his dead weight distributed to my shoulders and back. Hunching over, I carry him to the empty balcony. We inch out onto it, and then I lean Gabriel against the wall, holding him there with my back against his chest. I pluck the clerk’s moniker from my glove and drop it on the balcony. I peel back the glove covering my moniker, and menus spring up from the silver sword. I may not be able to communicate with it, but I can activate the hoverdiscs on the bottoms of my boots. I program them for rapid descent and smooth my glove over my moniker again. I clutch Gabriel’s arms. He isn’t very heavy, but it’s awkward to move with him on my back. Disregarding gracefulness, I climb over the railing of the balcony and leap off.
The cool wind whistling past my ears deadens the shouts from the henchmen on the rooftop. They don’t shoot, probably because Gabriel is shielding me. A few of them jump from the peak of the dorsal fin. My brother doesn’t move. He’s barely conscious.
Near the ground, the hoverdiscs activate and slow our fall. When I halt just above the sidewalk, inertia makes it feel as if my kneecaps will explode. Wincing, I look around for the alley. Sinister figures using gravitizers land on the avenue behind us. Black-clad, they hold rifles that could blow holes through Gabriel and me. But none of them fires. They pause, speaking into their monikers. I use my hoverdiscs to skate in the opposite direction.
They pursue us, but they’re on foot, so they fall behind. Rounding a corner, I nearly run into a hovering delivery craft idling in the alleyway. Animated characters made to look like crellas dance in a three-dimensional display of jouncing revelry around the perimeter of the hovertruck. Crella creatures bathe in chocolate streams that morph into showers of glaze and sprinkles.
For a second, I think I must have been sprayed by Hazy Daze-99, because this is my biggest fantasy, but then a man with a thick unibrow and a double chin calls to me through the window of the hovertruck: “Get in.” He points his thumb to the rear of the vehicle. The truck lurches forward, picking up speed as it moves through the alley.
“No!” I whimper. The back door of the craft slides open. I force my legs to move, skating behind it, my thighs burning. The holographic crella creatures wave banners and march next to me. Clenching my teeth, I lurch for the opening. As we dive through the doorway, the driver triggers the hatch, and it falls closed, hiding us within.
Small lights near the floor illuminate the inside of the hovertruck. Steel racks of ice-cream-filled crellas line the walls to the ceiling. In the truck’s crisp refrigeration, I lay on the floor beside Gabriel, our breath huffing in white wisps. I can’t tell if my brother shakes from the cold or from detoxification. The belts cut into my flesh. Unhooking the clasp, I free us from them. Gabriel tumbles away, curling into a ball on the floor.
“Gabriel, are you okay?” I ask.
“Where . . . am I?” he whispers.
“You’re in a hovertruck. I’m taking you to Balmora.” His forearms are so thin it makes me want to cry.
“Should let me die,” he says between clenched teeth.
My heart throbs painfully. “I’m not letting you die.” Peeling off my jacket, I lay it over him. We take a corner, and Gabriel rolls across the floor. I lift his head, stabilizing him against my shoulder. In my other hand, I hold a fusionmag pointed at the back of the hovertruck, in case the guards catch up to us.
I don’t remember the last time I was this close to my brother. Maybe when he stopped my mother from killing me on my Transition Day? That’s how it goes, though. The Fates Republic won’t allow us to be a family, using propaganda and their stupid hysteria-eliciting rhetoric to sow suspicion between siblings—casting doubt over secondborns’ intentions. Anger heats my face. A tear slips over my lashes. They should’ve left us alone as kids—let us be each other’s friend. Everybody always pointed out his golden sword instead, like it was the reason for him not to love me. But Gabriel loved me anyway, and it destroyed him. I can see that now.
Tears like I’ve never allowed myself course down my face. The Fates Republic keeps selling us the biggest lie of all—that we’re nothing to each other. Enemies. Now we’re all just liars.
My wrist communicator lights up. Wiping tears and snot, I take a few seconds to answer it.
“Do you have him? Is he okay?” Balmora’s voice trembles.
I take a deep breath and exhale. “I have him. He’s not okay. He’s sick and frail.”
“Just get him here,” she says with a shaky voice.
Soon the hovervan comes to a stop. I wipe my face on my sleeve again and train the fusionmag on the door. It slides open. “Let’s get this over with,” Double Chin says. “I’m late for my rounds.” He ignores my weapon and waves me out. “Move. We have a delivery barge ready to take you to Balmora at the Sea Fortress.”
Two more men with silver sun monikers flank him. One of the men has scars on his face from burns that went untreated. Lowering the fusionmag, I allow the three bakers to help me with Gabriel. They hoist him up and carry him out. I take my jacket and hop down. We’re on the waterfront. Tall white lights push back the darkness along the length of the pier. Sea air pushes at my hair. The bakers unload tall steel containers from the back of the hovertruck. Two are empty. “Get in,” the one with the burn scars grunts. The other two bakers are already loading Gabriel inside a separate case.
Harrowing fear blows through me. I’ll be at their mercy if I get inside.
The burned one reads my dubious expression. “You think we want you dead?” he asks. He’s missing a few teeth and smells like bread. I shrug. “We don’t want Grisholm to be The Virtue. We want one of us—a secondborn. We got nothin’ against you. You’re secondborn . . . and anyway, Balmora says you’re not to be harmed.” My options are limited, so I swallow my fear and step inside the hovering steel case. “You’re going to have to give me your weapons and wrist communicator. The security scanners near the Halo Palace might pick ’em up.” Reluctantly, I hand over my communicator and all the arms I’ve collected.
“Now lift your shirt,” he says.
I stiffen. “Why?”
“I have to put this on you.” He holds up a clear plastic swatch with silver wires running through it.
“What is that?”
“It mutes your heart so no one can tell that anything inside the box is alive. The case will hide your body heat.” I lift my shirt, and he attaches the adhesive swatch over my heart. “Paddy, you got some of ’em calico crellas?”
The one with the oblong face and a beatdown expression nods and walks to the cab of the truck. He returns and hands a small satchel to his partner. The baker offers it to me. Inside, a couple of pastries sit wrapped in wax paper. “For the brave one,” he says, and then shuts the door, locking me inside. Darkness and a delicious fresh-baked crella scent assault me. The case floats forward amid muffled shouts. Unwrapping a crella, I bite into it, and I’m overtaken by the taste of cinnamon-flavored sunlight. I should’ve been born into the Fate of Suns. If this is a last meal, it’s a good one, maybe the best one.
When the case finally opens, maybe an hour later, I inhale large gasps of fresh
air and squint against the lamplight. I’m in a room that resembles the exposed belly of an ancient sea vessel. An enormous chandelier made of coral and sea glass hangs from wooden rafters. Its lights resemble white tapers, but they’re actually fusion energy.
Quincy holds the door for me. I brace my arm against the side of the case. My knees ache, but I rise and step down out of the crate. I stand inside a palatial bedroom with an archway to a stone terrace.
Balmora’s melodic voice says, “You’re in the Fate of Seas’ tower.”
Gabriel is sprawled on the floor with his head cradled in her lap. She strokes his damp hair. My brother has been sick. Bile clings to his lips, which are a frightening shade of blue.
“We need to get him to a bed.” Balmora’s pleading eyes stare up at me.
I kneel on one knee and hitch Gabriel’s arm around my shoulders. Balmora does the same on his other side. We lift him up and drag him. His black boots skim across the carpet, kicking up dust motes.
The bed isn’t as musty. Its ornate frame is carved from real wood, which hasn’t been done much for centuries. It’s a pirate’s bed, or, at least, that’s what it seems like. Its four massive posts are carved dragonheads resembling mastheads from sea ships that no longer exist. Someone has recently changed the bedding, and dustcloths have been removed from the furniture and left in a heap in the corner. We hoist Gabriel onto the mattress and rest his head against the plump pillows.
“Where are your drones?” I ask Balmora.
“Outside my bedroom in The Virtue’s tower.” She fusses over Gabriel, pulling his boots off, removing his shirt.
“Why aren’t they with you?”
“I had a Star-Fated secondborn infiltrate them. A coded voice command from me will trick the drones into thinking I’m in my bedroom. Another will make them believe I’m in the gallery, and another that I’m in the media room. The Exos who monitor me have grown bored and often just rely on the drones to keep track of me. And my attendants are afraid of me, so when I tell them I want to be alone, they’re happy to leave me to myself.”
“How do you go anywhere in this place without being seen?”
She looks at me with an appraising stare. “My father’s brother, Edward, the last secondborn commander, taught me the secrets of the Sea Fortress before he died. We lived here together for years, my uncle and me. He introduced me to the network of spies who helped you tonight.”
“I thought you had developed it on your own.”
Balmora’s laughter contains little humor. “This network has existed for hundreds of years—passed on from secondborn to secondborn. You wouldn’t know about it, of course. We always lack Swords, because secondborn Swords within a family are rarely able to communicate with one another. Take your uncle, Bazzle, your mother’s brother. He was killed at eighteen, only a few weeks after his Transition. He could hardly pass any information to you. You weren’t even born. And the secondborn workers in the Sword Palace are terrified of your mother. They’re not a good resource for our network. The risk of discovery is too great. It’s not like that with other Fates. We live much longer than secondborn Swords. We work together, sometimes live together.”
“Census doesn’t know about it?” I ask.
“Census infiltrates our network from time to time. We recently had a whole branch of our operatives sheared away in the Fate of Moons. Some were murdered. Some destroyed themselves to protect others. We’re nearly blind there. Same within the Fates of Stars and Atoms. They’ve sided with the Gates of Dawn and cut us off, but we continue to groom operatives—individual Star- and Atom-Fated secondborns who reside outside their fatedoms will sometimes work with us. In Virtues, I have hundreds of secondborns of all Fates who have sworn loyalty to me.”
“What we need right now is a physician for Gabriel,” I urge.
“He’ll have one. An Atom will be here soon.”
Quincy brings a bowl of water from the bathroom. Setting it on the table next to the bed, she wrings out a small cloth and hands it to Balmora, who uses it to bathe Gabriel.
My brother opens his eyes when she washes his face. “Where am I?” he whispers.
“Safe with me,” Balmora assures him.
He lifts his shaking hand, touching hers. “Told you not to come . . . too late . . . should’ve . . . let me die.” His voice is raspy and slurred.
“You’re not allowed to die,” Balmora scolds in her bossiest tone. “Do you hear me?”
“I can’t stop her . . .”
“Who, Gabriel?” I ask, coming closer to the bed. “Who can’t you stop?” I’m worried that he means me. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I can’t,” Gabriel whispers. His eyes are now bleeding from their corners. “Only you can. Too many zeros.”
Is he delusional? Am I just part of his hallucination?
“Who is she?” I ask him. “Mother? Are you talking about The Sword, Gabriel?”
“Gabriel’s dead.” His smile is tragic. “Only Solomon Sunday’s left.”
“You’re Gabriel,” I whisper.
“Gabriel’s dead!” he shouts, his voice higher but not actually louder. “Just let us die!” He struggles to sit up, but he’s too weak. Balmora holds him down. His eyes flutter shut, and he pants for breath.
“You should go,” Balmora says to me anxiously. “You’re upsetting him, and I can’t have Exos looking for you here. I’ll have Quincy show you the secret way out. Don’t come back unless I call for you.” Pearls of sweat shine on her upper lip.
Gabriel is still trembling, covered in sweat. I desperately want to stay with him, but I know I’d only put him in more danger. “Balmora, you’ll keep me updated on how he is?” I ask.
“As best I can,” she replies, rising from the bed to hug me. We cling to each other for a few moments, and then she lets me go. “Thank you for bringing him to me. Quincy, help Roselle get back to shore. Use the sea gate, and make sure no one sees her leave.”
Quincy nods. “It’s this way.”
She leads me to the stone balcony, where the wind tosses my hair, pushing it into my face. Stone griffins, frozen in midpounce, stare at me from above. Quincy climbs the protruding mortar of the tower like a monkey and pulls on the stone snout of the griffin, wrenching it to the side. A stone wall beside the tall column opens, showing the outline of a doorway. Quincy climbs down and pushes against the wall, and the opening grows larger. She disappears inside. I follow her. Her small fusion-powered light pushes back the darkness inside, allowing me to see past her into a cramped hallway about three feet wide and maybe seven feet high.
“Push the door closed,” Quincy says.
I lean against it until it locks in place. Quincy turns away and walks farther into the stone hallway, a spiraling ramp down the outer wall of the tower. It’s a dizzying journey. The walls are dry and rough, but the air is damp and has a faint scent of rotten fish that gets stronger during the long descent. At sea level, other passageways branch off. Quincy stops and turns, whispering, “This leads to the main hallway. Security for the fortress is nearby.” She puts her fingers to her lips.
I nod. We tiptoe farther down the spiraling stone ramp. The air grow damper. Sea urchins encrust the walls. At the bottom is a small landing and a deep pool of water.
“The sea gate is down there.” Quincy points to the dark depths.
“You mean, underwater?” The last thing I want to do tonight is get wet.
She nods and walks to a round wheel with handholds. Turning the wheel activates a pulley system, which raises an iron gate, drawing it up from the water. “Are you a good swimmer?” Quincy asks.
“Decent,” I reply, tugging off my boots.
Quincy opens a wooden box and pulls out a device that looks like a small torpedo with handlebars. She set it down on the stone floor. Opening the front of it, she places my boots inside. “Anything else you don’t want to get wet?” she asks. I shrug off my jacket and hand it to her. She folds it and places it neatly in the torpedo. “
This mask goes over your eyes and nose so you’ll be able to breathe. There’s a dim headlight that I’ve programmed to extinguish when you get close to shore. When you get to the beach, press this button to open the hatch. Remove your things, then press this button, and the underwater propulsion device will return to the fortress.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“Watch out for sharks.”
My insides quail at the thought.
The mask sits tight against my face, and the air activates before I ease into the water holding the propulsion device with both hands. Sinking beneath the surface, the mask illuminates the opening to the sea ahead. The right handlebar has the throttle grip. Turning it slowly, I ease away from the stone fortress.
The water is cold, but it’s not unbearable. My legs drift as I circumvent rocks and reefs. Beautiful coral is alive with sea plants that sway in the current. As I near the Halo Palace, the water becomes shallower, and my chest and thighs bump against the sand. I let go of the throttle, and the waves push me gently toward the shore. I stand up and wade forward until I’m only waist deep. I collect my boots and coat from the niche, holding them above the water with one hand, then take off the mask and drop it inside before closing the compartment. Following Quincy’s instructions, I press the button, and the vehicle submerges and jets away.
Chapter 16
Carry these Bones
When I enter the foyer, my apartment is quiet and dark. Phoenix doesn’t waddle in to greet me. I drop my boots by the door and wait, but it doesn’t come. Maybe its hover mode malfunctioned? I take one tentative step, and then another. “Phee?” I slip off my jacket and leave it on the small table. I have sand all over myself. I need to shower and sleep.
Walking out of the foyer, I slow my steps. The lights don’t come on automatically in the drawing room. The shutters are closed. “Lights,” I order. Nothing happens. I fumble for the lamp I know is on the small bureau near me. I touch it, and the soft glow barely pushes back the shadows. I move to the other lamp near it, but the shadow of a figure on the sofa in the drawing room captures my attention.